So why does the mainstream press seek to place the blame on the parents and a supposed softening of immigration policy?

Because the alternative to blaming migrant families themselves is unpalatable to them.

The alternative is to accept that the Central American and North American Free Trade Agreements have left thousands of youth with no economic opportunities.

It is to accept that US security aid for drug wars has armed and aggravated violence in Mexico and Central America.It is to understand the high cost of supporting the Honduran coup and how the Honduran people and the US population continue to pay that price, as out migration has surged over 500% in the past two years and human rights violations, instability and violence are skyrocketing.

In my travels to migrant shelters and interviews with migrants coming through Mexico I have found that, astoundingly, they do realize the risks and yet decide to make the journey anyway.

The public-awareness campaign we really need is one addressed to U.S. citizens and Congress regarding the impact of economic and security polices on their southern neighbors, and especially on the children.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

This sense of safety hasn’t always been the norm for employees and patients of reproductive health care providers in Massachusetts. Prior to the buffer zone law, some protestors would dress up like Boston Police Department officers to deceive patients into providing their contact information. Some protestors would intentionally block the entrance to the door or stand in front of cars entering the garage. There were cases of protestors photographing or throwing literature inside of patients’ or employees’ cars. Most tragically of all, two employees were murdered at neighboring health centers in Brookline in 1994.

Part of my responsibilities as Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts’ Counseling and Referral Supervisor included overseeing the 60 volunteers who staffed our hotline, some of whom had been volunteering for Planned Parenthood since before I was born. I was often reminded by our volunteers of how lucky I was to have only known the health center after the buffer zone law was passed. When I trained new volunteers, many asked if I felt safe at the health center, and I would explain how the buffer zone worked. They were relieved to know that they would have a safe, clear path to the door every day.

Today, the Supreme Court struck down the Massachusetts buffer zone law that made me, my coworkers, and the patients feel safe and protected. It is incredibly disheartening to learn that my former coworkers and their patients won’t be protected by the same 35-feet that kept me safe. I trust that the staff at Planned Parenthood will continue to do whatever they can to help protect their patients and provide excellent, non-judgmental care, and encourage you to follow them online (find the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund on Facebook andTwitter) for ways to action to replace the buffer zone law.

“Thank God for the Saudis and Prince Bandar,” John McCain told CNN’s Candy Crowley in January 2014. “Thank God for the Saudis and Prince Bandar, and for our Qatari friends,” the senator said once again a month later, at the Munich Security Conference. McCain was praising Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services and a former ambassador to the United States, for supporting forces fighting Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham had previously met with Bandar to encourage the Saudis to arm Syrian rebel forces.

And where did that support end up? Clemons fingers former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan for funding ISIS, which he suspects was the reason Bandar resigned that post in February:

As one senior Qatari official stated, “ISIS has been a Saudi project.” ISIS, in fact, may have been a major part of Bandar’s covert-ops strategy in Syria. The Saudi government, for its part, has denied allegations, including claims made by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, that it has directly supported ISIS.

With Ebola continuing to spread in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, bringing the epidemic under control will require a massive deployment of resources by governments in West Africa and aid organisations, according to the international medical organisation Doctors Without Borders (MSF) – while warning that it has reached the limits of what its teams can do.

Ebola patients have been identified in more than 60 separate locations across the three countries, complicating efforts to treat patients and curb the outbreak.

“The epidemic is out of control,” says Dr Bart Janssens, MSF director of operations. “With the appearance of new sites in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, there is a real risk of it spreading to other areas.”

MSF is currently the only aid organisation treating people affected by the Ebola virus, which can kill up to 90 percent of those infected. Since the outbreak began in March, MSF has treated some 470 patients, 215 of them confirmed cases, in specialised centres set up in the region. However, MSF is having difficulty responding to the large number of new cases and new locations.

“We have reached our limits,” says Janssens. “Despite the human resources and equipment deployed by MSF in the three affected countries, we are no longer able to send teams to the new outbreak sites.”

Against the backdrop of the San Gabriel Mountains, I joined supporters at Peck Water Conservation Park along the Rio Hondo River on Saturday, June 14th to celebrateCongresswoman Judy Chu’s recent legislation to permanently protect over 615,000 acres of the San Gabriel Mountains, rivers, and parks. Co-sponsored by Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Tony Cárdenas, supporters include local governments, school districts, water agencies, businesses, residents, and organizations like San Gabriel Mountains Forever. And it’s easy to see why.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

As Turkish leaders scramble to find a way out of the crisis, details of the security lapses that led to the storming of the consulate are beginning to emerge. Unless the hostages are released unharmed, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan could face a political crisis of a scale that might yet torpedo his candidacy for the August presidential race.

What we know

On June 6, the governor of Mosul, Atheel al-Nujaifi, put in an emergency call to Kareem Sinjari, the interior minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq saying that ISIS was about to take over the city. Sinjari swiftly spread the word, a full five days before the attack occurred. It is unthinkable that the Turks were not aware of the danger. Yet they apparently did not feel threatened enough to evacuate the consulate. Indeed, as recently as June 10, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu declared that there was no threat to Turkey’s Consul General Ozturk Yilmaz and his staff. Davutoglu has since changed his tune, now saying that the security environment to travel by land to Erbil, the Iraqi Kurdish capital, had rendered evacuation impossible. Never mind that it’s just a 40-minute drive from Mosul. In the worst-case scenario, Turkey could have used helicopters to evacuate the personnel. Turkey has around 2.000 troops stationed on the Iraqi side of the Turkish-Iraqi border, nominally there to chase Kurdistan Workers Party fighters if need be, and they have helicopters.

While rarely fatal, Chikungunya can produce a severe fever and excruciating joint pain usually lasting for at least a week. Some studies (cite) indicate significant arthritis-like sequelae can persist for months or even years post-infection.

With an incubation period of between 3 and 7 days, and the enormous amount of international travel to, and from, the Caribbean, the concern is that this virus will soon migrate to other areas that also have a favorable climate and the right kind of mosquitoes.

But then, so is the United States, and even parts of Europe (Italy saw a mini-epidemic in 2007 when just one infected traveler started a chain of infection that eventually touched 300 people).

The good news, at least in most of the United States, is that most of us live and work in air-conditioned spaces, and live in regions that maintain pretty good mosquito control programs, and so we aren’t as apt to be continually exposed to (and bitten by) mosquitoes as people living in the Caribbean.

But as a native Floridian, I can assure you that it is pretty much impossible to totally avoid feeding our unofficial `state bird’.

She describes how Egyptian women often feel self-conscious for simply being out in public because sexual harassment can be found at every corner. Though women played a central role in both the uprising against strongman Hosni Mubarak in 2011, and the military-backed movement that removed Islamist leader Mohammed Morsi last year, hopes that the Arab Spring would empower women have been dispelled.

In fact, Egypt is considered the worst country in the Arab world to be a woman, according to a survey by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The report cited political instability and the rise of Islamist groups among the reasons for the repression.

Levels of sexual abuse in the country have reached new highs, according to the United Nations, which reported in 2013 that 99.3 percent of women in Egypt have experienced sexual harassment at some point in their lives.

“Girls are constantly paranoid when walking to the store or school,” Mahmoud said with frustration. “Harassment has become so widespread, some women rarely leave their homes.”

Victim-blaming is pervasive. “I see male rappers in Egypt writing songs to blame women for the sexual harassment inflicted upon them,” she said. “They say we deserve to be harassed because of the clothes or makeup that we wear.”

Mahmoud said she’s had it with the “double standards.”

“Girls are told what to do from day one — ‘dress conservatively, don’t be loud’,” she said. “I used the teachings I heard while growing up to write lyrics that show the previous generations in Egypt how they contributed to confining their daughters in boxes.”

Mahmoud’s hard-hitting lyrics are vexing Egypt’s ultra-conservative Islamists, who believe a woman shouldn’t be in the spotlight, especially if she wears the Islamic veil.

Mahmoud, in fact, faces discrimination because she’s veiled. Some critics go as far as calling her an “infidel” who is giving Egypt and Islam a bad name for openly discussing sexual harassment.

“One extremist man on Facebook threatened that he would find and kill me after my audition for ‘Arabs Got Talent,’ because I was a disgrace,” she said.

Thursday, June 05, 2014

Any questions about thoroughness of the research and lack or any bias?"The study was led by researchers at Duke University and designed and funded by the Medicines Company, the maker of the antibiotic, oritavancin. The drug, to be sold as Orbactiv, may be approved by the Food and Drug Administration as early as August under a special fast-track process, the company said." Hope it works well but if it adds to the problem of drug resistant bacteria - this model of research must change.

States currently exporting wild poliovirus

Pakistan, Cameroon, and the Syrian Arab Republic pose the greatest risk of further wild poliovirus exportations in 2014. These States should:

officially declare, if not already done, at the level of head of state or government, that the interruption of poliovirus transmission is a national public health emergency;

ensure that all residents and long-term visitors (i.e. > 4 weeks) receive a dose of OPV or inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) between 4 weeks and 12 months prior to international travel;

ensure that those undertaking urgent travel (i.e. within 4 weeks), who have not received a dose of OPV or IPV in the previous 4 weeks to 12 months, receive a dose of polio vaccine at least by the time of departure as this will still provide benefit, particularly for frequent travellers;

ensure that such travellers are provided with an International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis in the form specified in Annex 6 of the International Health Regulations (2005) to record their polio vaccination and serve as proof of vaccination;

maintain these measures until the following criteria have been met: (i) at least 6 months have passed without new exportations and (ii) there is documentation of full application of high quality eradication activities in all infected and high risk areas; in the absence of such documentation these measures should be maintained until at least 12 months have passed without new exportations.

Once a State has met the criteria to be assessed as no longer exporting wild poliovirus, it should continue to be considered as an infected State until such time as it has met the criteria to be removed from that category.

States infected with wild poliovirus but not currently exporting

Afghanistan, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Iraq, Israel, Somalia and particularly Nigeria, given the international spread from that State historically, pose an ongoing risk for new wild poliovirus exportations in 2014.

Reporters Without Borders is shocked to learn that Naseeb Miloud Karfana, a TV journalist based in the southern city of Sabha, was murdered on Thursday 29 May. Her body was found together with her fiancé’s in the city’s northern Al-Hay Al-Jadida district. Her throat had been cut and she appeared to have been tortured.

Naseeb had worked for the state-owned TV station Libya Al-Wataniya as its programme coordinators in Sabha for the past eight months, the station’s director, Ali Shaniber, said.

Karfana left the TV station at about 7 p.m. with her fiancé, who came to collect her in his car, so that they could attend a friend’s wedding together. When she failed to arrive, her mother contacted the TV station, where an employee confirmed that Karfana had left.

The authorities have not as yet released any autopsy reports identifying the exact cause of death of the two victims.

Relatives said Karfana and her fiancé had recently received repeated threats from an unidentified person. Reporters Without Borders urges the competent authorities to carry out an impartial investigation without delay to identify the motive for this double murder, giving full consideration to the possibility of a link to Karfana’s work.

“It is imperative that those responsible for this shocking murder are quickly found and brought to account, in order to end impunity in Libya,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.